My Two Cents

Geek.com PDA/cellphone Review: Motorola Q

Geek.com PDA/cellphone Review: Motorola Q

Nice and cool review of the Motorola Q. While the author is happy with most of the features of the phone, he sorely misses the Wi-Fi. We knew that, didn’t we?

Will iPhone bite the dust?

MobileCrunch: Why the I-Phone Will Be Apple’’s Huge Blunder

Atleast that’s what this article claims. While the author provides a very different perspective of the upcoming (?) iPhone, I beg to differ with him on many of his opinions. The success of iPod (as well as Mac OS and the associated hardware) is because of the simplicity of the UI design and the elegance of the aesthetically pleasing hardware. Though I agree with the author on the quirks of designing an user interface for mobile devices, Apple may still pull a few leaves out of Palm’s and Microsoft’s books (for a change!) to come up with an UI that is simple as well as functional. But the real challenge would be the battery life – the Achilles heel of modern PDA phone devices. If Apple can pull this off (OLEDs, anyone?), then there wont be anything that could stop them from achieving leadership in this segment too.

One more important strategy that Apple should adopt is the release cycle and the number of devices that they are going to release. Unlike the regular mobile device companies which release a new model every other day, Apple should stick to its core business of providing services (like iTunes, location based services etc.,) around the device and not overwhelm the customers with a flurry of iPhones.

Ok. So lets continue keeping our fingers crossed.

Are you a computer geek?

NerdTests.com Fun Tests – Computer Geek / Nerd Quiz

Oh well, I love quizzes, especially like the one above. I scored 89 percentile and got a “Computer Geek” title. Try your geekiness too!

RSS Feed Reading with Microsoft Outlook 2007

For people like me, who spend 70% of their time in the Outlook inbox and calendar, here is some good news. With 2007, Outlook is now a full featured RSS reader (Another catchup game from Microsoft in the recent times). RSS readers with an outlook-like interface are a great way to fool your boss – while he may think you are busy reading emails and acting upon them, you are in fact browsing through your favorite blogs.

So what do you need to do to read your favorite blogs on Outlook? First, get the RSS/atom feed link. If you are using IE7, it is as simple as clicking on the RSS icon which launches outlook. Otherwise, if you know the link, just copy it to clipboard and click on Tools -> Account Settings -> RSS Feeds. Click on the new button which launches a small address dialog box. Paste the address here, and you get an “RSS Feed Options” dialog which gives you several customizations for your feed.

Once added, you can click on RSS feeds in your Outlook personal folders to view the recent articles. Unfortunately, Outlook does not allow you to search for RSS feeds as most Newsreaders do. It may appear in the final version, though.

So what is the advantage of using a mail client as an RSS reader? Well,the first reason os that you can forward interesting articles to your friends/colleagues. You can download them fully and sort it into different folders for later reference. In short, much of what you do with an email can be done on the articles you receive as feeds.

For open source fans who do not use Outlook, Thunderbird can be a similar great RSS reader. Though you can do RSS reading with firefox too, with its built-in bookmarks toolbar – it only gives you the headlines, which many times may not be very helpful. There are several RSS news reader extensions available for firefox though.

PS: After using it for a few days, I really started liking the new interface of Office 2007. While initially it looked baffling (Since the interface wasn’t changed in decades), the new toolbar layout is just brilliant and highly usable. Sure M$ has put in lot of research into the new UI. I am planning to write a complete review, if time permits. I am using it only in my Home laptop, the office IT guys won’t allow me to install it. Let all the IT guys go to hell.

Wii will cost only $220

Bloomberg.com: Top Worldwide

Weeee..!!!!! Probably, the best news of the week. Only slightly priced higher than the PSP, the Wii is all set to fit everybody’s pocket. (Money, that is!). So all the people, fasten your seat belts and get ready for the Wii.

How to run IE within Firefox

IE Tab :: Mozilla Add-ons :: Add Features to Mozilla Software

Occassionally, you might want to run the IE browser too. Many banking and financial websites allow you to enter their secure website only if you use IE (They think it is the safest browser, HA HA HA). Switching between both of them will be a pain. Why not run IE within Firefox? If that sounds interesting, this plugin is for you. It allows you to switch between Gecko and IE rendering engines with a single click a la Netscape. Go get it while it is hot.

5 Reasons why the HTC Wizard is better than the Motorola Q

As the much-hyped Motorola Q’s release has now become imminent, it is time to do a little bit of analysis to see if it is really worth all of the hype generated. In my opinion, the HTC Wizard, which is branded as Cingular 8125, Qtek 9100, O2 mini S etc., is a much better option. Here are my 5 reasons why you should select the Wizard over the Q.

1. The Q runs the Smartphone version of Windows Mobile, whereas the HTC Wizard runs Pocket PC Phone edition. Smartphone is a relatively new platform when compared to Pocket PC, hence so many wonderful applications that are available for Pocket PC are not yet available for Smartphone. The Pocket PC platform is more mature and also comes with Mobile Office, whereas Q ships with a 3rd party Office Viewer (no editing is possible).

2. No stylus input for Q. To me, this is a very serious shortcoming. [Though this is again a problem with the Smartphone OS]. Even the other popular Treo platform ships with both keyboard and stylus inputs. Most of the time, you will be using the PDA as a viewer than a input device. Hence, stylus is a much faster and easier option than using the keyboard. (Imagine a day without the mouse!!). The HTC Wizard has a telescopic stylus.

3. No Wi-Fi on Q. HTC Wizard ships with support for 802.11b/g. Need I say more?

4. When I scanned the Smartphone software websites, I see that there are very few applications which are 320×240 compatible. Even though the Wizard also switches to landscape mode when the keyboard is slided out, this is not a major problem because most applications for Pocket PC are landscape mode aware. This is because of the longer history of the platform, whereas the Q is the first Smartphone based mobile phone to ship with landscape orientation.

5. HTC has over 90% of the Windows Mobile market share (Even the Treos and iPAQs are made by HTC) and have a huge portfolio of devices, whereas Motorola’s tryst with WM devices always ended up as disasters. (The list includes the infamous MPX 300, which barely saw the light of the day along with MPX 220 and 200). forum.xda-developers.com is a great website for HTC unofficial support along with numerous others on the internet. Search for mpx 220 and 200 support on the internet!

Disclaimer: I do not work for HTC Though the recommendations are based on my personal opinion, you are requested to verify all the facts yourself and judge which is the best device that can suit you. Good luck.

BTW, you just read my 100th post on this blog!

What the font?!

Ever wanted to find a font just like the one used by certain websites or publications? Well now you can, using the WhatTheFont font recognition system. Upload a scanned image of the font and instantly, what the font will find the closest matches in its database.

read more | digg story

Windows Media Player 11 screenshots

The ‘Sync’ View

Nice Thumbnail view of the media.

Because of the large icon size you get to see only a few items on the screen. The only worthy new addition is the search-as-you-type feature, which iTunes has for ages now.

Now Playing view – Nothing new here

Widgets, Widgets and More Widgets

Inside Google Desktop: Say hello to Google Gadgets

Ha, its a widget war out there! First it was Konfabulator. Then came the Mac dashboard. Then Vista widgets. And then Opera. The Gnome desktop will also have widget support. And Add Google to this list now (They call it gadgets by the way).

I am really not getting the point here. Within a years time (That is, when Vista gets released) all mainstream operating systems will have widget support. That being the case, companies should concentrate on creating useful widgets than coming up with their own “me-too” widget engines. As I see, widgets written for one engine do not seem to be compatible with the other. This will result in the annoying rewrite of widgets for every engine. Atleast 3 softwares installed on my machine support widgets. Can something be done for this?